Statement of President John Quincy Adams On the Institution of Freemasonry & the 9-11 Abduction and Assasination of Captain William Morgan

"Freemasonry, corporate Freemasonry, is chargeable with the stealing of a free citizen, and the murder of a father and husband. The proof of this subject is perfectly conclusive and is to be found in the reports of the trials of the kidnappers of William Morgan, and in the official accounts given by different Special Attorneys.

It is responsible for having baffled inquiry, for having defeated investigation by the removal of witnesses and for having produced the acquittal of persons notoriously guilty.

It has been decided by Judge Marcy in New York and by two sets of triers at circuit court held by Judge Gardiner in the same state, and by a court in Rhode Island, that the obligations of Freemasons disqualified a man from being an impartial juror in a case where a brother mason was a party; and such undoubtedly is the law of the land.

The Grand Lodge of New York has given one hundred dollars in charity to one of the most guilty kidnappers of Morgan. The Grand Chapter of the same state has given one thousand dollars to aid and sustain other well-known kidnappers and to enable them to escape from justice, at a time when they had no money to bestow in charity to widows and orphans. This has recently been established in the trial of a libel suit brought by Jacod Gould, which was tried at Albany, New York.

But perhaps the most remarkable evidence of the binding force of masonic obligations and the real power of the fraternity, is afforded in the conduct of those who control the newspapers of the country.

When the English forger Stephenson was kidnapped in a distant state and brought forcibly to New York, the whole country rang with the alarm which was sounded by the newspapers and every patriot was called on to resent this invasion of personal liberty.

But when a free citizen of America was dragged from his family, forcibly carried through the country and drowned in the deep waters of the Niagra, a death-like silence pervaded the newspapers; or if they spoke, it was to notice the outrage in terms of irony and as a trifling and unimportant affair.

The papers of every party teemed with the most gross misrepresentations; a simultaneous attack was made on all who were engaged in discovering the offenders; fabricated accounts of Morgan having been seen at different and distant places were incessantly circulated and every effort made to delude the public and mislead inquiry.

How tremendously powerful must have been that organization, which could produce that shameful treachery of the press to its public duties!

These facts are as notorious as the sun at noon-day and a stronger proof of their general truth cannot be adduced, than the single circumstance that to this day, thousands and millions of reading citizens of this counrtry are ignorant of Morgan's abduction and murder and are totally uninformed of the abominations of Freemasonry."

-- President John Quincy Adams

[William Morgan was abducted 9/11 1826 and murdered by Freemasons because he had tried to expose the evils of Freemasonry. On his grave stone, the words are etched: The bane of our evil institutions is to be found in Masonry, Already powerful and daily becoming more so. I owe to my country an exposure of its dangers. Capt. W MORGAN.]